The Wild Rebels

A youthful race car driver named Rod Tillman (Steve Alaimo) unconvincingly gives up racing and, after a chance encounter with a biker group, joins the group, composed of three idiot dudes and their shared girlfriend. Trouble is, the bikers like to rob businesses for "kicks", which invites inept cops. The result is a not very believable story with contrived action and some hokey performances.

Steve Alaimo isn't too bad as an actor. But the actors who play the bikers are simply awful. The characters they play have been described as the three stooges, and I tend to agree; they act retarded. Which renders the Tillman character's decision to join them not credible. Further, the film contains multiple plot holes, mostly involving the cops. The entire story seems fake. It's as if the writers spent all of ten minutes putting the script together, and without bothering to edit it.

Dialogue is hopelessly dated and consists of beatnik blather. "Do you dig this?" "What now daddy?" And "bread" translates to "money". Some of the action is laughable, like when one of the bikers, to escape the cops, runs out of a lighthouse toward the cops, hops on a police motorcycle and rides away. The cops don't fire on him as he approaches them; they let him ride away and then they shoot.

Color cinematography is adequate if unremarkable. Day-for-night camera filters are really obvious. Outdoor scenes appear to have been shot in real locations, which adds a sense of realism. Steve Alaimo sings a couple of songs, which has the effect of interrupting the plot flow and suggesting that the script was written with no purpose other than to promote his singing career.

"Wild Rebels" is not as bad as its reputation. But it really doesn't seem to have any point, and the story and acting are generally hokey. It's one of those cheap, meaningless drive-in films wherein the main draw is an excuse to eat buttery popcorn.

Very little in this film makes any sense at all. It is pretty easy to laugh at, especially with how some of the characters are just goofy in appearance, especially Banjo. Wait, was he the guy with the sunglasses? It was hard to tell them apart. I admit to knowing little about illegal activities like this, but I assume it would be easier just to identify the bikers right away and arrest them. It turns out the female biker falls in love with the mole. Yep, pretty predictable.

Another really weird thing was how they robbed a gun store. Yeah, they just took a gun and robbed it. Wouldn't the owner use his own guns? Most people would want more action in this. There is more action in the end, but it's pretty stupid. Even that seems to go on too long. I couldn't understand how the bikers were called "Satan's Angels". Was "Hell's Angels" under copyright? Was it meant to be ironic? Either way, it's pretty stupid. It goes on too long with relatively little happening. *1/2

"Wild Rebels" was probably a fun second film at a drive in movie triple feature 40 years ago. It hasn't aged very well, but it was never meant to age well; it was obviously intended to be disposable, forgettable fun from its inception. Taken on that level, it's a good example of the biker flick genre.

Several elements help distinguish it from the dozens of similar films being churned out at the same time. The 'hero', 'Rod Tillman' (Steve Alaimo) comes off as somewhat of an unimpressive 'Everyman' - he's not especially brave, tough, talented, or handsome (although he does win a fight with a tough biker gang member halfway into the film, and the girl gang member chooses to help him over her fellow gang member at the end of the film). The soundtrack is quite well done, featuring a nice 'Ventures' style bass/drum riff that keeps things moving and saxophones and brass charts that pep things up quite a bit. And although the script is pretty shallow, all the actors inhabit their cardboard characters convincingly and with a fair amount of energy.

There are plenty of careless technical gaffes: terrible 'day-for-night' scenes that occur in broad daylight, squealing tires in a swamp, fire sirens mistakenly stuck on the soundtrack instead of police sirens, a bank sign made of duct tape on a ceiling tile, a Luger that sounds like a Winchester 30-06, shotgun blasts that cut down people 100 yards away, a detective killing a biker on a 3rd floor landing from the ground with a revolver with a 2 inch barrel.

There are a whole bunch of goofy story elements : Linda (the girl gang member) disables a bank guard with a drug-filled syringe, the final shootout takes place inside a lighthouse (!), police roadblocks don't actually block roads, the police apparently never heard of ducking, and the police detectives apparently never heard of planting bugs or having their undercover guy wearing a wire.

But the plot chugs along, the cameraman knows what he is doing, the pacing in most scenes is pretty good, and there are some nice, zippy one liners and dialog exchanges here and there that keep the energy level up. (My favorite: "Man, you're messing with private stock! (ie, Linda)" So no, don't seek this one out or anything, but if a copy of the MST version should fall in your hands, you should have some good, shallow fun watching it. Vastly superior to "Five the Hard Way" or "The Hellcats" or even 'Girl In Gold Boots' (three other MST covered counter culture movies).

Steve Alaimo takes time from his musical career to star as a washed-up stock car racer. He gets recruited by a motorcycle gang whose outfits tastefully combine the worst of ragpickers' work and Nazi memorabilia. After they beat up random guys in a bar because, they get Alaimo to be their getaway driver in their latest fund-raising expedition. What they don't know is he's an undercover cop.

Everyone is thoroughly unlikable, but the technical issues are decently covered; it's a constant mystery to me that there are plenty of fine cameramen -- even if their only previous run as DP was THE WILD WOMEN OF WONGO -- sound technicians and mixers, but writing a story and characters that you can care about remains a mystery. Never mind. There's a well-shot final shootout in the well of a lighthouse, with lots of overhead shots. Doubtless it's all symbolic, man. Woohoo.

This is basically your run of the mill violent biker flick complete with nifty slangs, crashes, and music. OK, so just slangs and crashes. It's a slight notch above much of the other fare featured on MST3K but it's still the equivalent of driving a nail into your kneecap: slow and painful. To give away plot would exhaust my energy so I'll just say you're better off skipping this one.